Are Neck Adjustments Safe?
Some people refuse to go to a chiropractor because they fear suffering a stroke after neck manipulation. Recent media attention has focused on the claim of a cause-effect relationship between chiropractic and stroke, yet little evidence actually supports the hypothesis that neck manipulations can cause a stroke. A recent study in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics makes this relationship seem even more implausible. The researchers who conducted this study concluded that in normal circumstances, typical chiropractic manipulations to the neck are highly unlikely to tear the vertebral artery, and that the strains measured on the arteries in this study were within the range of those generated during normal activities. In fact, the estimated occurrence of stroke following cervical manipulations is approximately one per 6 million manipulations; even in these cases, the manipulations aren’t necessarily the cause of the strokes. By comparison, a person’s odds of getting
